We’ve made no secret that we’d love to be able to upgrade the current calendar on the website. It’s not the ideal calendar for our purposes, but at this point it’s better than not having a calendar at all. We’d love to bring you The Top Picks of The Week and Advance Registration Dates articles. We’d also love for you to be able to share events easily with friends and family!

We want to be able to continue to provide ALL of our content for READERS for FREE. So, we’ve gotten a little creative. We would also like to thank one of our followers for the coffee meeting to help us brainstorm.

Here’s what we have so far: We have a grand total of 5 site and calendar sponsor spots available. These sponsors will have ad space available on our website and we will also do some social posts for them as well. We also have community sponsor spots available. These are a little more flexible. Keep in mind, any and all of these sponsors will be instrumental in keeping the site free for all readers so it will be important to thank them, visit and make purchases from them. We are also extremely grateful for the community sponsors. Again, without these sponsors, it simply will not be possible to continue to offer all the content for free.

Next up: we have decided to bring the Rural Northeast Wisconsin Families Restaurant Guide to life! We have so many incredible new restaurants that have opened in the area and it’s so much easier to share the information in one spot. I have some difficult eaters so unless I can see a menu ahead of time, it’s highly unlikely that I will visit a new restaurant. I’m aware that there are a lot of families like mine, whether it’s by choice or necessity. I do plan on offering portions of the guide for off-line use since I’m also aware of spotty-internet issues throughout our area. I’m excited for this guide to get published! I kept the price to be included in the guide very affordable.

Finally, our last option for fundraising was actually a very difficult decision. At the heart of our business is supporting small and supporting local. We want you, our readers, to continue to shop our small, local businesses as much as possible. They are an invaluable resource. Please continue to shop our local stores as your first priority as much as you can. However, if you find yourself needing to order something from Amazon…. We are an Amazon Affiliate now. If you place an order using our affiliate link, we could earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. So, you’d get what you were planning on getting, at the price you would have gotten either way, and you’d be helping us at the same time. We do have our Amazon Affiliate link in a couple of articles already. Don’t worry. We are bound by FTC rules and you will ALWAYS know if a link is an affiliate or if there is a possibility that I’m being compensated in any way. Also know, that also at the heart of this… whether I get paid or not, I will always give you my honest opinion and I will continue to provide the content families need or will find useful.

I want to thank each and every one of you for your support.

As always, if you have any questions, please reach out. My email is mariev@ruralnewfamilies.com